


Within if never with

by lbmisscharlie



Series: Equivocal [1]
Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Gender Changes, Ambiguous Relationships, Asexual Sherlock, Canon Rewrite, Female Friendship, Gen, Genderswap, John "Three Continents" Watson
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-02-26
Updated: 2016-02-26
Packaged: 2018-05-23 07:22:27
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 11,072
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6109347
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lbmisscharlie/pseuds/lbmisscharlie
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“That — that thing you did, that was good.” Sherlock stutters over her words and rubs her temple with Jo’s gun and Jo’s ankles feel shaky from the way she’s crouched. She laughs, but she — she’s not yet given her life for someone, not yet, but she thinks she will, someday, for this woman. This woman who smacks her toes down loudly across the tiled floor like she’s making a statement, who waves one hand like it’s not holding a lethal weapon, whose chest, when dotted with red laser sights, is still and steady and bloodless and pale. </p><p>They walk away from the pool and Sherlock’s arm brushes against hers in the chill night air. Then they go home and Sherlock doesn’t speak for three weeks.</p><p>A Series 1 retelling, in the interstices.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. with what clamor why restrained I cannot fathom

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks to [Peninsulam](http://archiveofourown.org/users/peninsulam/pseuds/peninsulam) for ever-present encouragement and a read-through of this many moons ago; to [Greywash](http://archiveofourown.org/users/greywash/pseuds/greywash) for at some point, at least a million and half years ago, suggesting a need in the world for more cis female John Three Continents Watson and thus getting me started down this path; and to [Breathedout](http://archiveofourown.org/users/breathedout/pseuds/breathedout), [Neifile7](http://archiveofourown.org/users/neifile7), [Vivi_Marius](http://archiveofourown.org/users/Vivi_Marius), and missoj for once, briefly, reassuring me that this was something that people might want in the world (and for constant genderswap and femslash love all over tumblr and abroad).
> 
> This is part one of a planned five-part series; however, the rest might never make their way here, as they're in a sorry state. Nonetheless, I offer this up as a standalone, dedicated to my fellow genderswap lovers, in the hopes that the world isn't quite done with Series One rewrites just yet.

There are precious few times when Jo can, gloriously, stop thinking of Sherlock, and right now, with George the thirty-five-year-old builder between her legs, is one of those times. His tongue slides _roughwetslick_ over her clit and her fingers tingle and her skin prickles and for once it’s not because _someone_ left her acids unlabelled. His hand, broad and rough and short-fingered, presses against her abdomen, thumb just above the jut of her pubic bone, and she squirms then settles when his fingers lift, just enough to let her move, and it’s clear it’s not some heretofore-undiscussed need for dominance.

His other hand is grasping the thigh that’s currently swung over his shoulder, and his fingertips press into the layer of soft flesh that reminds Jo she’s no longer a soldier. She doesn’t hate it, not exactly, not when there’s a hand gripping her tight and a mouth making soft, appreciative — humming, vibrating — noises against her heat and her muscles are starting to tense in the same delicious way they do when Sherlock says _run._

She’s reaching and reaching as his mouth moves and his hand presses down on muscle and her heel hits him in the ribs; her fingers twist in his hair as she holds him _there, just there_ and she has just enough time to think about the glory of having her mind to herself before she shatters. 

He crawls up over her and kisses her, lips slick with her taste, and she wriggles her hips against him, sated and lazy and obliging. He grins and pulls back and she says, “In the drawer,” and his grin widens as he reaches. She admires the way his skin stretches over his ribs and is ducking her head to kiss the ridge of his oblique muscle when the door bangs open. 

He startles, body jerking in surprise, but she just groans and twists to look around his torso to the door. “Jo, I need you,” Sherlock says, pulling on her gloves with a cool precision that should be — is — annoying. 

“No, I’m certain you don’t, not right now,” Jo answers, and George the builder, still straddling her hips, turns to look uncertainly between the two. “Go away,” she says, and George starts, and she rolls her eyes and grasps his arm and sighs, “Not _you._ ”

Sherlock doesn’t sigh, or groan, or whinge, but she stays standing in the open door, not looking, but thumbing through her phone. George is decidedly too still on top of Jo and she arches up against him and he gapes and says, “What, really?” and Jo gives him a look.

“She’ll get bored and leave eventually.” Jo ignores Sherlock’s sniff of disagreement. 

“Double homicide, Jo,” Sherlock says, like she’s offering a treat, “the man bludgeoned to death — half his head is missing — and the woman — not his wife, mind — without a hand. That is curious,” she muses, pleased.

George groans, “Fuck,” and slides off her, falling to the side of the bed, half-covered in the twisting sheet. 

“You’re not tempting me, Sherlock,” Jo says, the cool air leaving gooseflesh over her now-exposed skin, and she reaches for George. “Come on, I mean it. She will leave without me if we ignore her.”

He gives her a look and she bites her lip, because maybe that’s not exactly the right thing to say in this particular moment, and he closes his eyes and says, “You are bloody strange, you know that?”

From the door, Sherlock chokes a laugh, and Jo reaches blindly for something she can throw. She comes up empty and sighs and says, “I suppose the mood’s gone off, then.”

“Bludgeoning,” George says peevishly, and Jo says, “Right.”

She sits up and swings her legs off the bed and stands to search for her clothes. She’s totally naked and that’s actually a first in front of Sherlock, but Sherlock’s tapping her fingers against the doorframe like she’s bored, and Jo has no idea why she’s still waiting. “You don’t actually need me,” she says, because the backs of her thighs are still sweaty and damp and sticky and her nipples feel heavy and aching and there’s a streak of pre-come on her hip. 

Sherlock looks up and looks at Jo’s — everything — before settling at her eyes and the gaze is just as knowing as it is on corpses, as it is when Lestrade’s still a bit hungover and Sherlock’s feeling vicious, as it is when Jo’s had a frustrating day at the surgery and she’s not quite sure why she still goes, but all Sherlock says is, “I want you there.” 

“Oh,” Jo freezes, knickers halfway up her thighs, and furrows her brow. 

“Today, if you please,” Sherlock says drily, and it’s back to normal, just like that. Jo finishes dressing quickly and waves Sherlock away as she kneels to find her shoes under the bed. She sits on the edge to pull them on, tie them, and George has been silent this whole time, watching.

She’s ready to leave but she turns to him first, where he’s still in bed, half covered, muscular and lightly tanned and still somewhat hard under the sheet, and she blinks, slowly, because these are the choices she makes.

“You can —” she licks her lips, because he could stay, it’s not a problem, but there’s nothing in to eat and Sherlock’s dismantled the telly box and there are more hands in the fridge than any respectable household should have. Sherlock’s voice comes up the stairs, impatient, and it’s half eleven at night which means even if they do get this wrapped tonight, there are going to be grumpy night-shift coppers to deal with and they might not be back until morning. 

“Why don’t I ring you?” she says, and he groans. She takes the three short steps back to the side of the bed and kisses him, his lips tight under hers, and pulls back; he’s annoyed, yes, but resigned, and he falls back against her pillow with a sigh. “Feel free to —” she’s not sure what, so she shrugs and says, “Let yourself out,” just as she does the same. 

She follows Sherlock and stands back so she doesn’t get blood on her shoes, and the murderer is the woman’s flatmate and comes back, distraught in a way that’s half-acting, half-hysteria, and tries to run. They chase her down an alley, and her body just drops, falls weak in the corner when there’s no way out, so Lestrade has to haul her up by an elbow and cuff her. 

Jo’s legs shake with the pleasure of tension released for the second time that night and she grins at Sherlock, who has colour high in her cheeks and is laughing, so Jo joins in.

++

Jo comes downstairs wearing a jumper that’s clearly been hastily pulled on over her pyjamas in an effort to fend off the early-morning chill not yet expelled by 221’s rickety pre-war radiators. The hem rolls up in the back, the tag sticks out, and Jo absently scratches at the nape of her neck. Her trousers are flannel, worn and featuring a subtle stripe, masculine and deeply unassuming. She wears slippers, shearling and clearly new, a gift from Harry on her return, only pulled out when it’s really rather cold indeed.

She makes tea, one slippered foot scratching the back of her calf. Her close-cropped hair is flattened behind one ear where, Sherlock imagines, she tucks one palm as she sleeps, curled on her side facing the door, facing danger. Imagines, because she’s never seen Jo sleep, in the twelve weeks they’ve been living together.

Jo’s a strange study in vulnerability and strength: she doesn’t mind Sherlock seeing her like this, rumpled and bleary-eyed and still shaking off Morpheus, nor is she shy about her body, walking through the flat after a shower, only a towel secured snuggly across her chest, baring her skin when injured, soft curses as she patches herself up. Sherlock has seen her scars and her freckles, has carefully preserved the public places of her body though the more intimate are still oblique, once-glimpsed only. 

Increasingly, Jo has stopped hiding her emotions, allowing herself to snap at Sherlock with impatience then swallow it back in with an apology. If Sherlock sometimes pushes her with remarks a little careless and experiments a little messy it’s only because of those little moments when Jo snaps, when she breaks the carefully composed shell that usually surrounds her, when her sensibly ordered doctor’s mind, soldier’s body, reverts to an instinct she’s tried many years to restrain. Sherlock savours those moments, and marvels as she watches Jo rebuild her armour. 

She’s not sure, sometimes, if she’ll ever push her enough to cast the armour off entirely. 

But she never sees her sleep. Doze, occasionally, yes. Blink back and fight against sleep, sometimes. But never the dead, stifling weight of exhaustion or the deep sleep of contentment. Presumably, Jo sleeps easily — Sherlock has timed the noises from the upstairs bedroom and it takes an average of 14 ½ minutes for the sounds of Jo shifting in bed (squeak of the box spring, creak of the bedframe, rustle of duvet against the fabric of her pyjamas) to settle. Longer every few days, when the rustles and sounds have a distinct pattern and Sherlock thinks she can almost hear the brush of skin against skin. Sometimes a soft hum, muffled by the duvet; distinctive but discreet. She wonders what images blink behind Jo’s eyelids, then, what bodies she imagines against hers.

Sherlock can’t imagine it, herself, but she knows it’s the done thing: it’s not uncommon for a woman Jo’s age — their age — without a regular sexual partner — or even with, for that matter — to stimulate herself to release. Even those nights, she’s not awake much longer, as if the task itself is familiar, routine. 

As a soldier and as a doctor, she would have been accustomed to snatching sleep when the moment presented itself and god knows in their line of work now there are many sleepless nights. But Jo only rarely naps on the sofa, rousing herself before her sleep falls too deep, catching herself when her head lolls against the back of her chair, blinking eyes grown heavy as she leans her chin on one hand, listening to Sherlock rail and pace. 

Sherlock finds herself more and more eager to catch Jo dreaming, to see her animated face softened by sleep, limbs loose and heavy, and the instincts that keep Jo’s shoulders back, feet square, that swivel her head and clench her fists at sudden noises, relaxed into the edges of her mind and body. She bides her time, hoping that perhaps the comfort that allows Jo to sprawl restlessly on the sofa, pushing Sherlock’s feet out of the way and commandeering the telly remote, will soon allow her a doze, a catnap, an open door, though Sherlock’s not so deluded as to hope access to Jo’s bed, the opportunity to observe her in the stillness of night, deep in dreams.

What she would do with it were it offered she’s not sure.

Sherlock reflects on Jo’s hair, its changed state evidence of the moments they’ve spent apart, Sherlock supine on the sofa, nicotine buzzing through her body and brain firing through connections, and Jo asleep. In bed — curled, perhaps, sheets twisted around her body, or maybe sprawled on her back. It sticks up near her crown, the spiral of hair making the short, spiky strands unpredictable. Pouring the now-boiling water into a mug, Jo cups the ceramic whilst waiting for the tea to steep, giving a slight shiver of pleasure as the heat infuses her cold hands.

Sherlock thinks of buying her a dressing gown. She entertains the thought of cashmere, silk-lined and the dusky blue that makes Jo’s eyes bright, before dismissing it as too extravagant for Jo’s frugal tastes. Sturdy wool, then, blackwatch check and cuffs that roll up, capacious pockets that Sherlock can slip things in — notes and bits of evidence and perhaps her own hands, arms around Jo’s hips, pulling their bodies together. A transfer of heat, through fabric, through skin.

Yes, a dressing gown is acceptable. 

Touching is so often a prelude, fraught with meaning, so Sherlock avoids it in situations where such lead up may be inferred. But with Jo, casual touches have come easily: a hand in a pocket, a brush of shoulders together in the hallway, the touch of hands exchanging items, elbows gripped to guide and draw attention. 

Jo touches her now, a bump of the back of her wrist to Sherlock’s forearm, tea sloshing in the proffered mug. Sherlock looks up, startled, and Jo looks at her like she’s being endlessly amusing. “Solved it yet, then?”

“Hmm?”

“The case.” Jo sits, hands wrapped around her own mug, and kicks off her slippers, tucking her feet up, knees to her chest. It’s rare that she looks childish, and Sherlock feels something flutter in her ribcage. Something like annoyance, or fondness. 

“Oh, that. Lestrade should be texting us at any moment to say they’ve found the man’s head.”

“How do you know they’ve found it?” Jo asks and groans when Sherlock’s phone chirps. “You and he plan this, don’t you? It’s all an elaborate, long term prank. I bet your brother’s in on it, too,” she adds when Sherlock just rolls her eyes. 

“Shoreditch,” is all Sherlock says, feeling exceptionally pleased over Lestrade’s rare impeccable timing. 

“Well, I suppose I’d best dress properly, then,” Jo says with a laugh, plucking at the front of her jumper. Sherlock merely nods, making no move to stand and leave to change, though she herself still wears yesterday’s shirt and trousers under her dressing gown. 

Jo, though, begins to undress as she walks away, tugging her jumper up, pulling the cuffs and wriggling her arms out of the shoulders. It catches the tee underneath and for a long moment, the skin beneath is revealed. Flat stomach showing a slight softening on the sides, ribcage broadening with her movement, each bone outlined only when she twists to catch the back of the jumper and tug more firmly. The soft, full underside of her bare breasts, skin pale and the light and shadows emphasising the heavy curve.

Sherlock can almost feel Jo’s body against her mouth, wanting to count her ribs with her tongue, to taste the sleep-stale sweat of her skin. To press her lips to the silvery glint of a scar on her sternum and feel the years it represents. To move up to places more hidden, nipples hardening against her teeth and still-healing scar tissue warm and rough beneath her tongue. All her textures and tastes; it suddenly seems important that Sherlock catalogue them, note if they change, quantify the cells of Jo’s body.

Many people discount the rest of the senses when observing, forgetting all that a heartbeat, or the taste of sweat, or the heavy, natural scent at the joins of the human body — elbow, underarm, groin, knee — can reveal about a person. They might look and they might touch but there are so many other ways to learn the truth of the body.

Jo finally gets the jumper off and settles her tee with a short laugh. As she turns toward the stairs, Sherlock wants to halt her, to take in the heavy roundness of her breasts against the soft cotton, her nipples hard and tight in the cold, her neck and the hollow between her collarbones bared. The contrast of textures must be extraordinary. As it is, she must content herself with absorbing the brief, fleeting impression before Jo’s movements conceal it from her.

Then, though, she is able to follow the shifting rise of her buttocks, of her thigh muscles beneath warm flannel, the bared tautness of her Achilles tendon, the flash of her rough heel as it rises from her slipper as Jo steps out, to return to the upstairs bedroom to change. Once she disappears around the corner of the landing, Sherlock leaves for her own room to change.

++

Her wrists still burn and her heart has yet to slow down. An award-winning bruise is forming on her thigh and her shoulder aches, only recently re-located with a painful jerk and Sherlock’s long-fingered hands probing at the joint. She can’t stop smiling.

“Is this Stockholm Syndrome? It must be,” Jo says; Sherlock ignores her. “They thought I was you.” Her laugh is pitched too-high, hysterical. 

“The idiocy of the general public never ceases to amaze,” Sherlock responds, and Jo elbows her. 

“Ta very much,” she says, tucked close to Sherlock on the pavement. They’ve both waved off any paramedic help, but Lestrade has threatened them with a night in the cells if they don’t stick around long enough to give a statement. Sam sits in the back of an ambulance, blanket over his shoulders, and Jo thinks she should go to him, but doesn’t. 

“Not you,” Sherlock says, peevishly, craning her neck to see if Lestrade’s finished up yet, and Jo feels her cheeks warm with more than the proximity of another body.

“Um,” she says, feeling very eloquent, and Sherlock says, “Though I’d prefer it if you didn’t get kidnapped again soon.”

“Not for another month at least,” Jo agrees cheerfully. “But really,” she starts, and Sherlock interrupts to call out to Lestrade that he has one minute and a half before she leaves. Jo snorts; her gratitude will wait for another day.

Lestrade makes his way over just as Sherlock counts down his last six seconds, looking at her watch, and gives a sigh worthy of Atlas, world on his shoulders. “Your date seems very convinced he nearly died in there,” he says, by way of greeting, and Jo blushes.

“Yes, yes, close call, I saved him, Jo helped, one suspect dead, the other escaped, and a jade hairpin still to find, though I’ve an idea. That should sum it up.” She pulls her cuff back down to cover her watch; Lestrade blinks.

“I’ll need more than that,” he says, slightly overwhelmed, and Jo takes pity and explains what little she knows from her side, Sherlock impatiently butting in to correct her every other sentence, until Jo gives up and says, “You tell it, then,” and Sherlock does.

Lestrade’s rubbing his forehead and making notes to bring in the organized crime unit when they wind down. Across the street, Jo sees Sam exchange a few words with a paramedic and stand, discarding his blanket. She pulls away from Sherlock, who pauses for just a moment before launching back into her theories, and walks over to him.

“Not the most successful date I’ve ever had,” she says to him, and he laughs raggedly.

“Possibly the most exciting one I’ve had,” he says, with a shrug, and she bites her lip, holding back her smile.

“Up for more?” she says, feeling direct, but he says, “Ah —” and looks away. 

“Oh. I — that’s fine —”

“No, just —” Sam begins, then smiles at her again. It’s a little raw, still, but genuine. “Maybe not tonight.”

“Oh. Again, then?”

He nods, once. “Not a circus,” he says, and she laughs, heavier and more solid than the breathless giggle of earlier.

Jo watches as Sam leaves in a cab and thinks, despondently, _I saved him from near-certain death._ “If that can’t get me laid, I don’t know what will,” she says to the night air, and Sherlock snorts, having come up behind her.

“Not everyone enjoys near-death experiences,” she says dryly, and Jo laughs, wheezing slightly. Her chest hurts, just a bit, around the edges of her ribs. “More’s the pity,” Sherlock adds, hailing a cab. 

“I think I’m off circuses forever,” Jo says, rotating her shoulder gingerly in the back of the cab. “And I’m not entirely certain I still have a job.”

“You do,” Sherlock says sourly. “Sam’s far too cowardly to fire you after I so gallantly saved his life.” Jo snorts.

“You?” she says, and elbows her. Jo can just see the reflection of Sherlock’s smile in the window.

++

She does still have a job, as it turns out, and better still, Sam cautiously asks her out for a cup of coffee on her shift break and tells her she’s insane, but —

“You still want to date me?” Jo fills in, with a grin, and he coughs, and shakes his head, and says, “I must be mad.” 

“Dinner, tomorrow,” Jo says, impulsively, and he grins at her across the table, hair glinting copper in the afternoon sun and shirt collar open, relaxed. The pulse point at his neck just shows, and Jo remembers how it had pounded in the dark that night. “I’ll try not to get you kidnapped,” she says, like she can control it, and doesn’t say _I’ll try not to get you Sherlocked,_ because she knows that’s something completely outside her influence. He brushes his hand across hers, fingertips on her bruised knuckles, and warmth spreads low in her belly. 

“Or tonight,” she says, impulsively, and his grin spreads slow like honey. 

++

They make it to dinner and right through dessert, and Jo’s phone is silent in her pocket. She hasn’t turned it off, doesn’t dare, for without a response Sherlock’s just as likely to show up to interrupt, insistent. 

Sam’s flat is neat but lived-in: a capacious — and ugly — knit throw over the back of the lumpy sofa and a very large telly, a few magazines on the table, tech-y types and medical journals and the revealed corner of what looks to be Men’s Health. Jo toes off her shoes and tucks one foot up under her leg; the freedom of movement still surprises her.

Sam hands her a beer and they clink the necks together. She takes a long drink though her muscles are already pleasantly warm from the wine at dinner, and sets the bottle down on the table, shifting closer. Laughing, Sam grins and mimics her; she slides her hands up his thighs and leans in until they’re sharing air, his shuddering exhales skating across her lips, and waits for him to meet her.

He does; she hums, pleased, against his mouth, and he circles his hands loosely around her wrists, rubbing his thumbs on the soft inner skin, every movement the echo of a promise. 

When he pulls away, breath quick, and looks up at her with dark eyes, she’s not certain how long it’s been, but her lips are sensitive and warm, just the barest hint of a burn at the corners where they’ve brushed his short stubble, and her body is heavy, aching. She grinds down against him and he inhales, surprised, and grasps her hips, thumbs digging in just above the jut of bone, and she moves again, dragging against him. 

“I don’t —” he starts, then huffs as she slides one hand under the edge of his rucked-up shirt. “I think we should slow down,” he says, and her hand stops.

“Slow down as in — stop, or —?” She holds herself very still, weight bearing on her thighs instead of resting against him, and he lets go of her hips. “Right,” she says, and swings her leg down so she can sit, still facing him but with a bare, empty six inches between them.

“I just —” He looks down, then up, and oh, gods, he’s practiced that look, she knows for certain. “We nearly got killed on our first date,” he says, and Jo blinks. “Maybe we shouldn’t rush into anything?”

“Ah,” Jo says. 

“Just — slower,” he says, and she shakes her head, smiles, says, “Yes, no, of course. Slower.” He reaches, skates his thumb across her lower lip; her eyes flutter closed for just a moment. “Should I call you a cab?” he says, and she keeps her eyes closed for a breath, then opens them and nods.

++

Sherlock is in the kitchen-cum-laboratory when she returns, her eyes bug-like behind safety goggles when she looks up at Jo. “I could have told you he wouldn’t have sex with you tonight,” she says, and Jo answers, “Piss off,” but without malice.

Humming, Sherlock returns to the kidneys spread in front of her, scalpel held delicately. Under the elastic of her goggles, her hair bunches, giving the crown of her head a disheveled beehive. 

Leaving Sam’s flat, Jo had been keyed up, turned on — she would bet she’s still slick between her legs, though her arousal has mostly gone cold with the brisk air and the long cab ride. Besides, if she went upstairs to have a wank now, Sherlock would only listen in. 

Instead, she fills the kettle and sits at the bar table waiting for it to boil. Without her asking, Sherlock begins to describe her findings in a low, steady voice, while she makes very small cuts in the organ on the table. Jo listens, and gives her own input a bit, and makes tea for them both, returning to sit at small cleared space at the edge of the table, toes hooked over the seat of one of the chairs and hands wrapped around her mug, so she can lean over to look in the microscope when directed.

She hasn’t considered Sherlock’s handwriting before, not really; it’s neater than one would expect, an efficient amalgamation between script and print, and slants strongly to the right. Always in a hurry, Jo thinks, and Sherlock’s pen does fairly fly over the pages of her notebook. 

“You could have stayed over,” Sherlock says abruptly, and Jo says, “What?” still disconcerted by the stilling of Sherlock’s hand.

“I didn’t require your assistance tonight,” Sherlock adds.

“I do live here, too,” Jo says, peevishly, and Sherlock does something with her face that’s very near rolling her eyes, yet somehow far more put-upon. “What?”

“Don’t be obtuse,” Sherlock says. Her eyes narrow, nearly imperceptibly. 

“I’m not,” Jo says. “He didn’t want me to stay.” Sherlock frowns. “He called me a cab,” Jo clarifies, heat rising in her cheeks.

“Ah,” Sherlock says, like she understands, though Jo has her doubts. 

“I don’t mind coming home,” Jo says, pressing her toes into the cushion of the chair. They squeak against the vinyl upholstery. “I mean,” she adds with a wicked grin, “it’d be nice to get off, properly, with a man, but your company is fine, too.”

“What a ringing endorsement,” Sherlock says dryly, but when she tips her head back down to the microscope, the corners of her lips curl up.

++

She sleeps on Sam’s sofa next time, which is fair enough; she’d come over all in a rage about bloody Sherlock and Jo’s bloody gun, spitting mad, and she wouldn’t have wanted to shag her, either.

It’s just — that gun isn’t even supposed to exist, never mind be used to shoot holes through walls and dressing gowns with no concern for any semblance of safe use. Jo’s rage had positively boiled, sick and hot and furious, and she’d grabbed the gun and disassembled it to calm the furor in her hands. Sherlock had watched, wide-eyed and attentive, as she disengaged, slid the magazine out and dropped the bullet still in the chamber into her palm and dismantled the piece deftly until she had its powerless component parts in her aching, angry hands.

She had dropped the pieces into the bottom of her shoulder bag; she doesn’t really care for carrying it, but as it turns out, it’s quite handy for the things their daily lives might demand. Nitrile gloves and specimen bags, zip ties, a lighter, a utility knife, bandages, the remains of a protein bar, gum, a balled-up pair of stockings (Sherlock’s), and, now, an illegal firearm.

Slinging the bag over her shoulder, she’d left without changing clothes or having tea, as she’d planned, and is reminded of both when she rings Sam’s doorbell, trying to tug the wrinkles from her blouse and ignoring the growl of her stomach. She hopes he knows a good Indian place near.

He does, and his quiet goodnight kiss tastes of korma and beer; she snugs the ugly knit afghan over her shoulders and settles into his homely sofa to sleep.

++

News of the blast wakes her right up, her stretching yawn abandoned as the news camera pans the familiar street. She shoves her feet into her shoes, the tongues bunching up in her haste, and calls out to Sam. He emerges, half-wrapped in a towel, as she steps out the door. Her last sight of him is his hand half-raised in bemused concern.

Sherlock is fine, of course: cockroach-like, indestructible. Curled on the grey armchair, elbows akimbo and violin held awkwardly across her lap, she even bore a resemblance to an insect. The squawks of her violin would reveal her temper even if the sour expression on her face didn’t, and if Mycroft’s been here half as long as Jo suspects, he has the patience of a saint. A deviously cunning saint, but —

“I won’t take it,” Sherlock says, punctuating her words with a particularly sour draw of her bow. Jo rolls her shoulder and goes into the kitchen. She kicks one of the cupboard doors closed with a satisfying crack and thinks she hears Sherlock snort.

“Do try to persuade her,” Mycroft’s voice calls from the other room, and Jo ignores him. She pops the button of the toaster down and taps her fingers against the edge of the counter.

“It’s no use appealing to her better nature,” Sherlock says. “I’ve nearly cured it out of her.” Jo snorts to herself.

Toast, buttered, and Nescafe, black, Jo ventures into the sitting room and claims her chair. As if her presence constitutes a quorum, the explanations begin once more, and soon enough Jo has a file for Andrew “Westie” West in her lap and Sherlock studiously ignores Mycroft’s departure.

“You’ve nothing on,” Jo says; her voice tilts towards whinging, and she finds she doesn’t care. It’s not as though the gun will stay at the bottom of her handbag.

“I can’t possibly take a case so boring as that,” Sherlock says, whipping her bow to point at the file in Jo’s lap. It whistles in the air; Jo raises one eyebrow mildly. “And from Mycroft, no less.” 

“Well,” Jo says, standing and tossing the folder onto the coffee table, “we’d best find you something to do, else Mrs Hudson may very well have a heart attack.”

“Nonsense. Her heart’s in fine shape.”

“The wall, Sherlock.” Sherlock wrinkles her nose peevishly; Jo’s not so oblivious as to think she wasn’t being deliberately obtuse. “Hey,” she says, kicking Sherlock’s ankle as she passes; Sherlock draws her feet in — like an earwig, Jo thinks, slightly madly. “I’m serious, you know. None of this destructive boredom; I won’t have it.”

“Piss off,” Sherlock says, and spreads her legs out again. “And stop mothering me; I’m not one of your simpering patients.” 

“No,” Jo says mildly. “And thank god for that — you never listen to me anyway.” 

“You’re just cross because you didn’t get a leg over,” Sherlock says, half a mumble, and Jo snorts with sheer bloody surprise at Sherlock’s adolescent taunt. 

“No, Sherlock, I’m cross because you stole my gun, shot up our wall, nearly got blown up, then refused to do anything about the boredom behind it all. I’m cross because you’re a bloody child!” Sherlock huffs; it ruffles the curls of her fringe, and if Jo weren’t quite so annoyed with her, it would be endearing. 

“The explosion was across the street,” she says, and it’s nearly an apology. “And I don’t see how a gas leak is my —” She cuts off abruptly at the chime of her phone, pulling it up then grinning broadly at the contents. She tosses it to Jo, who catches it one-handed, still frowning at Sherlock, and leaps to her feet. Violin in its case and dressing gown torn off and dropped on the kitchen floor, Sherlock sweeps into her room, presumably to dress.

Jo reads the text, then sighs. “I knew it was your bloody fault somehow!” she calls through Sherlock’s open door, then makes her way to the stairs to throw on some clothes that haven’t seen a restless night on a lumpy sofa.

++

An invitation to a crime, Sherlock thinks wryly. How splendid. It takes her an intolerably long time to solve the first clue, but she hadn’t thought — why hadn’t she thought? — that it would be so personal, that her name — woman’s hand, blue ink, Bohemian stationary — would only be the start of what this mystery bomber knew about her. 

Between calls, when the pink phone lies silent and dark, Sherlock slips her hand into her pocket and touches it, a talisman. It is warm against her palm, the case retaining the heat from her thigh. Its ring, sharp and shrill, sends her pulse racing madly. Butterflies, she thinks — is that strange swooping feeling in her gut what people mean? It’s nothing like cocaine but wonderful nonetheless and she has to stop herself from grinning, train her thoughts to the corners of her lips — forty-three muscles in the face, five nerve branches, temporal, zygomatic, buccal, mandibular and cervical — because Jo’s eyes are on her, always, on her mouth, the set of her shoulders, on the curl of her hair over one ear and precise movements of her fingers. Sometimes Sherlock thinks she need never stop moving, not if it means Jo’s watchful gaze sweeping over her, nourishing. 

The old woman rattles her — her gasping, dying breath in the chill, impersonal air, digital and distant. They wait at NSY for an hour, but when no call comes, Lestrade sends them home — “Get some rest,” he says, banally — and Jo nods and touches Sherlock’s forearm, bare where she’s rolled up her sleeves, and her voice is intolerably gentle when she says, “C’mon, yeah?”

The inside of Sherlock’s cheek is chewed raw; a hateful old habit she’s never quite trained away, and she stares very resolutely at the back of the cabbie’s head — two children, a flat in Watford, undiagnosed depression, and an oncoming bout with the flu — and suckles on the sore flesh, drawing the tang of wet, coppery blood across her tongue. 

Jo’s gaze is heavy with understanding — unbearable! — and Sherlock escapes it by retreating to her bedroom, where she lies very still on top of the neatly tucked duvet and stares at the ceiling and doesn’t chew on her lip. Above her, Jo moves with a solid, deliberate slowness, sitting heavily on the bed for three long minutes before shifting to remove her shoes, which drop heavily to the floor. She, too, lies down and doesn’t sleep, too quiet and too still, and Sherlock imagines the pair of them, stacked like children’s toys in a dollhouse, matching stiff backs and blank stares. 

After a few hours, they shift to the sitting room, Jo arriving just on Sherlock’s heels, attuned; Jo’s unrest has made her irritable and illogical, and the pink phone sits on the table between them, silent. 

“Will caring about them help save them, doctor?” she spits, because Jo is practical, deeply, and she does care and she doesn’t — about the lives that may be lost, certainly, but not about the individuals. She can’t possibly; she’s human. 

“Nope,” Jo says, bitterly, and sneers when Sherlock raises an eyebrow, and slams her hand against the back of the armchair. 

“Oh, you’re angry,” Sherlock says sardonically; Jo isn’t, not properly, not like Sherlock suspects she can be, but she hasn’t time to think on that, so she files it away for another, lesser day, and they go to look at a body on the shores of the Thames.

The painting — oh, the painting is gorgeous — not just the technique, no, but the giving up, the offering of this particular puzzle for Sherlock to crack open. Carl Powers, Ian Monkford, Connie Prince: all quiet little scams on such a tiny scale. The Prince murder will sell a few tabloids, sure, but this — a lost Vermeer! — this is a game of nations and of history if pulled off, and this Moriarty has offered it up, something precious, like a gift.

Sherlock knows, distantly, that the child and the old woman are both a raising of the stakes, and that the pips count down to a denouement, and so she drops down chips of her own, calling the bet.

_The pool. Midnight._


	2. something that maybe I could bargain with

When Jo first comes to in the back of a darkened lorry, she laughs, then chokes around the gag cutting into her cheeks. That’s five, since she met Sherlock, five kidnappings and she’d begin to have doubts in her own ability to detect a tail, if two of those hadn’t been Mycroft and one intentional, and damned if she’d ever let Sherlock convince her to be bait again.

Her head feels stuffed with cotton. Wrists and ankles secured tight with zip ties; she tests the bonds, but she won’t be able to break them. Her wriggling catches the attention of the man driving the lorry and he laughs, a short, gruff bark, and takes the next corner sharp, throwing her off balance. The bare metal of the floor slams hard against her shoulder and hip, and she grits her teeth and moves to sitting, knees tucked up to her chest, hands pressed against the floor below her. Finally the lorry comes to a stop; she listens for the front door to open, but the driver stays still, whistling low and off-key. 

Finally, after three long minutes — Jo counts the ticking of her watch — the rear doors of the lorry open. Jo kicks out, both feet together, a battering ram, and catches one of the men in the chest. He’s knocked off balance, and the door swings wide open, caught in his tumbling hand, but the second man catches her next movements quickly and slams his hand — and, she realises distantly, the butt of his gun — down on her ankle. She still kicks at him, but with less strength, legs extended and power gone, and he manages to catch his elbow around her feet and wrench. With a great flash of pain, her ankles, then legs, then body are twisted sideways, his body pinning her down. She grabs, scratches with her bound hands, but he twists again and traps them underneath her torso.

“Now,” he says, voice at her shoulder, “won’t you just behave.” Jo glares at the side of the lorry and doesn’t speak, but she does go still, realising that as long as he is holding her down, as long as she is bound, there’s no chance to escape. She’ll just have to wait for circumstances to change. She’s hauled out bodily, slung like a rolled carpet between the men, one with elbows hooked around her shoulders and one hefting her ankles. In the darkness, she can make out the shape of a skip, overflowing with rubbish bags. The road beyond the alley is still.

She struggles enough to make the carry difficult, but they manage, manoeuvring her through the steel back doors of a building and down a corridor. They drop her, heavily, onto a tiled floor and flick on a light. There’s a drain beneath her fingers and, as she blinks up against the flickering fluorescent light, she makes out a shower tap. It’s some sort of locker room, and it reeks of chlorine and industrial cleaner. A pool, then. She doesn’t recognise it, but then, she hardly has time to make it to the community centre of late. 

“You’ve a performance to make,” one of the men says gruffly, opening a locker and hauling out an overstuffed, worn duffel. “Best get you in costume.” She swallows thickly. He unzips the bag slowly, pulling out first a crumpled parka, army green with flattened fur trim. Then, more gingerly, comes what Jo had been expecting. 

The vest is nearly elegant: the semtex bricks stacked neatly, geometrically, wires discreet, and, she realises as they haul her to her feet, cut her bindings, and begin to force the vest over her arms, made to fit her body. It zips close, tight; the man doing up the fastening, the one she’d kicked, lingers between her breasts and she lifts her eyes to his. She shuffles her feet forward just a bit, just enough to make him draw his neck in, tight, and narrow his eyes. He jerks the zip up all the way and presses the blocks against her chest, hands just over her breasts, though separated by the explosives. She draws in a deep breath, chest pushing him away, and after a long, deliberate pause, he steps back. 

The other man steps up and forces an ear piece around the cartilage of her ear, like something the Secret Service wear in films. He unwinds the wire, hands unnecessarily close to the nape of her neck, and tucks the receiver into the waistband of her jeans. His hands linger, too, and she takes a deep breath, refusing to let it shake. 

“There,” a voice in her ear says, and she startles. The man behind her laughs. “My dear Doctor Watson. So glad you could make it.” Jo bites against the fabric gag. “Oh, how terribly rude of me,” he says, and a moment later the binding is sliced free, the knife whistling by her ear. “Welcome,” he says. Jo doesn’t respond. “You can speak if you’d like,” the voice comes again, but at her silence, a sharp, trilling laughter fills her head. “So stubborn, I just can’t fathom what she sees in you. Now,” he says, voice calmly stern, “you’re to do just as I say, and repeat my words just as I say them. No embellishment, and do try to keep the crying to a minimum. It does so ruin the performance.” 

The voice is silent for a moment, and the men man-handle her into the parka, zipping it clean up before standing back. “Showtime, Doctor Watson,” says the voice, “time to go.” Jo doesn’t move. “I said, time to go,” the voice repeats, and one of the men shoves her forward. She stops, holds her ground, and is calculating the possibility of charging the first man — the one she’d kicked — and also disarming the second, when Sherlock’s voice echoes into the room. 

“Good evening.” It’s faint, but it’s enough, and when Moriarty’s words rise teasing, taunting, in her ear, she steps forward.

++

“That — that thing you did, that was good.” Sherlock stutters over her words and rubs her temple with Jo’s gun and Jo’s ankles feel shaky from the way she’s crouched. She laughs, but she — she’s not yet given her life for someone, not yet, but she thinks she will, someday, for this woman. This woman who smacks her toes down loudly across the tiled floor like she’s making a statement, who waves one hand like it’s not holding a lethal weapon, whose chest, when dotted with red laser sights, is still and steady and bloodless and pale. 

They walk away from the pool and Sherlock’s arm brushes against hers in the chill night air. Then they go home and Sherlock doesn’t speak for three weeks.

++

Once, when Sherlock was six, she’d forgotten how to speak. Rather — she hadn’t forgotten, but she hadn’t yet learnt, not enough, didn’t yet know enough to twist her tongue around established words that meant what she needed to say. Once, when Sherlock was six, her father died, and she was forgotten.

It was Mycroft who realised first, who noticed her unmoved mouth, her lungs and larynx and soft palate touched by silent air. He told her to speak and she didn’t, so he did instead. He told her of death, of the body unsustained and decomposing, of Plato’s logos, thymos, eros, of mirror neurons and empathy. He spoke to her until she spoke back; he tells her later it was three days only, though it felt an eternity. Her mother never noticed, wretched in her widow’s weeds. 

People talk to the silent, Sherlock learns: a pause, a quiet moment, a tip of the head and a furrowed brow go far further to bringing out confessions than the brashest of accusations, certainly. Few take kindly to Sherlock’s words, anyway, so she teaches herself to be silent when needed. 

At the pool, she’d felt her voice fail, just for a moment, when Jo appeared. Meaning lost in all the words still in her head until Jo’s voice (not-Jo’s voice, for it was flat and dull and angry) clamoured them back together, all in a rush and a tangle, as Moriarty spoke through her. Sherlock gives him her words, and he sings his back, and neither say what they really mean, and Jo is the only one whose words speak straight.

“That — that thing you did —” words insufficient for Jo’s forearm, pressed against Moriarty’s pale, sinuous throat, for her hand clenched in anger, for her voice thick with determination — “that was good.” Jo’s laughter, when it comes, reverberates; the water trembles. 

He comes back, of course, but then: a reprieve. Jo’s relieved; Sherlock’s annoyed. It’s not that she’d wanted to be blown up, of course — _of course_ — though the tilt of Jo’s head had shuddered through her body, careening across her nerves and skidding, jamming, at her fingertips on the gun. 

Arriving back at half-two, blood singing, they, by tacit, silent agreement, do not part. Jo puts the kettle on, pure instinct, and peers into the fridge. There’s naught to eat but a week-old takeaway, Sherlock knows, distracted as they’ve been by the past week. Jo scrounges up an iced-over bag of oven chips from the freezer and dumps them on a pan. Sherlock pushes aside an abandoned experiment and sits on the table; the overhead lamp warms the sweat-chilled nape of her neck.

Shoving the chips in the over, Jo leans against the worktop. Her lips twitch, like she can’t stop a smile. “What the hell happened tonight?”

“I don’t know,” Sherlock admits. Jo’s gaze on her is frank. “But I think I’d rather like to meet the person who changed his mind.” Jo raised an eyebrow. “If only to thank them for their impeccable timing.”

Jo snorts. “You’re annoyed. You wanted to show off, to get us out of it.”

Sherlock shrugs and doesn’t say _only if it were_ us, _truly,_ and says, instead, “I had a plan.”

“No you didn’t,” Jo says, like Sherlock knows she will.

“I had the beginnings of a plan.” Jo laughs and drops her head. Her shoulders relax for the first time all night — all week, perhaps.

“Come on,” she says, “these’ll take a bit, and you’ve not slept in days.”

“Not tired,” Sherlock says automatically. It’s only half-true. She’s not ready to be tired yet — too much to process and file and analyse still — but she follows Jo to the sitting room and lies on the sofa.

++

Sherlock wakens with a start, eyes opening to the fading darkness of the early morning. Across from her, Jo curls in Sherlock’s chair, one foot tucked under her thigh and her head slumped against the back. It’s more than Sherlock expected, Jo in slumber: her mouth half-open and her lashes faint shadows. She looks soft, and Sherlock marvels that the person inhabiting that body, unassuming and fragile, is the same as Jo at the pool, that those eyes had been hardened in the certainty of coming death, that the now-sprawled limbs had coiled, tightened by instinct and force and sheer bloody anger. Is there a word for her? If there is, Sherlock doesn’t know it, but she somehow feels certain that the English language lacks all it would require to encompass Jo Watson.

A plate of chips sits on the table; they’re cold, but Sherlock eats a handful anyway, her stomach demanding her attention. At the movement, Jo stirs. She blinks, owlish, at Sherlock, and the bleary trust is enough to make Sherlock not mourn the opportunity to observe her more in the stillness of sleep. Suddenly, the life in front of them seems very vast indeed.

“Bed?” Jo says, voice croaking. Sherlock nods and swings to her feet. Jo unfolds more slowly, wincing as she rolls her neck. Her gait is careful, but it seems to be only stiffness from her doze. Sherlock can’t bring herself to ask if Jo sustained any injuries, if anything happened in the long hours between Jo’s departure and Sherlock’s arrival at the pool. The knowledge of Jo’s body, fragile, bruised, is intolerable, and Sherlock cannot allow the certainty, preferring to not know. 

They pause together at the door. Jo touches Sherlock’s elbow. “I’m glad we’re —” she looks up; Sherlock nods. “Sleep well.”

Sherlock sleeps fitfully, rather; she sees, over and over, Jo, crouched against the wall, giving Sherlock a nod. In sleep, the gesture is magnified, slowed, the held breath of the world. Moriarty’s head turns to a snake, undulating, and Jo pushes Sherlock into the pool, and Sherlock gags on chlorine, comes sputtering to the surface only to breathe and start again, gun in her hands, and this time she shoots and all turns red and grey and black and Sherlock’s throat fills with ash and she clamours out of the rubble only to breathe and start again. And again. And again.

++

The next day, the blood in her throat beats heavy, the inner surface raw, imagined ash and dust and chlorine stripping away, layer after layer, the tender flesh. Every breath cuts and speaking — speaking is unthinkable. She curses fragile, susceptible bodies and her own mind for falling prey to the whims of her subconscious. 

Jo is already up when she shuffles into the kitchen; it takes a glance at the clock to ascertain the time, as the windows are still boarded over and steady rain obscures the sun. Nearing one in the afternoon.

Smiling at her, Jo reaches for the bread and slaps another slice into the pan, flipping it when lightly browned and cracking an egg over the top. Sherlock’s feet are cold — the whole flat is cold, icy wind blowing through the cracks in the window. Pulling her dressing gown from behind the sofa, Sherlock wraps up, falling onto the sofa and reaching blindly for her phone, left on the table in her bleary early-morning move to bed. The battery’s dead, of course, and with a disgusted sigh, she drops it to the floor. Wriggling her toes between the sofa cushion and arm, she closes her eyes and continues last night’s cataloguing. Moriarty’s words tumble over and over — _burn the heart out of you; you can’t be allowed to continue; wrong day to die_ — and she tries to fit them into patterns. Everyone has patterns, has tells, slips of the tongue that give away unintended meaning. 

Phrases, gestures, Moriarty’s sing-song voice and clean-pressed suit, his undulating movements and the click of his heels echoing against the tile: each is called up and filed away, organised, neat. Deep in her own mind, she startles, body jerking and eyes flying open, when something drops to her stomach. Above her, Jo leans with a wry grin, and resting on her abdomen is Jo’s phone. “Mine’s charged up, if you need it,” she says, a generosity not often freely given. Oh, Sherlock has free use of Jo’s phone, and laptop, and books, and person, but usually through demand and an impatience for Jo’s natural intractability. She always gives in, in the end, so why fuss?

She frowns up at Jo, and Jo shrugs. “Just this once, mind,” she says, in Mrs Hudson’s indomitable voice, and Sherlock snorts. “I’ve made you egg on toast, too, and you’ll eat it and like it.” Sherlock blinks, and Jo sets the plate next to her phone, where it heaves slightly with Sherlock’s breath. Jo’s not yet noticed Sherlock’s taken voice, so she leans her head up and brings the toast to her mouth, to avoid Jo’s pestering. Crumbs fall to her chest, roll into the folds of her neck, and she brushes them away, irritably. 

She’s not yet in a post-case stupor, Moriarty’s lingering presence providing too much stimulation to allow for boredom, but the nourishment is appreciated. She wonders if she might, just through silent suggestion, induce Jo to bring her a cup of tea. To that end, she reaches toward the table, grasping for a non-existent cup, as if out of habit, and makes a small annoyed huff when reaching only air. She pointedly does not look at Jo, but swallows audibly before taking another noisy bite of toast. Jo eats her own, curled in on herself at the desk, where the full brunt of the drafts fall, and picks away at her blog. She hasn’t made herself a cup, either, so Sherlock considers it likely that one will be forthcoming for them both, chilled as Jo must be getting.

Indeed, a few minutes later Jo shivers and, carrying the remainder of her toast, goes to the kitchen and fills the kettle. Sherlock suppresses a crow of triumph, and, soon enough, a mug is deposited on the table and Jo relocates herself and her laptop to the armchair. With toast and a few large gulps of tea warming her stomach, Sherlock returns to her filing process, and the short afternoon passes quickly.

++

The pauses which punctuate Jo’s speech — those silences which, flouting conversational convention, Sherlock rarely condescends to fill, even in the best of humours — grow longer, stretch, until within them, within Jo’s anticipating body, entire dialogues are held nonetheless. Jo moves from bemused to concerned to annoyed back to concerned to resigned over three short days, the last culminating in Sherlock, dropped, bodily, into the bath so that the hard porcelain bruises her elbows. Sherlock’s throat has long since healed of its imaginary ailment, but she keeps her tongue still nonetheless, a challenge and, if she’s being quite honest with herself, a pleasure. 

For some, falling silent means invisibility, an erasure of a self unable to articulate, to proclaim, but Sherlock finds, with delight, that to those with whom she maintains frequent contact — Lestrade, Molly, Jo — with her voicelessness comes a heightened awareness of meaning. At crime scenes, Lestrade dogs her footsteps like her unsaid words will reveal themselves in her movements, as though, without the distraction of her pointed deductions, he will be able to decipher with her the evidence at hand. She takes particular pleasure in her own amplified inscrutability and considers it a testament to her body’s carefully honed expressiveness that each crime scene is left littered with insulted subordinates, all the more put-out trying to pin down the enigmatic source of their ill-temper. 

Molly treats her with a bewilderment neither unexpected nor unwelcome, for with it comes a number of conciliatory gestures: morgue access with little argument, coffee when she’s working, an even more helpful than usual concession to Sherlock’s pointed, if silent, requests, right until Jo finds out and tells Sherlock off in front of her, at which point Molly realises Sherlock isn’t actually put out with something she had done. 

Sherlock’s still tongue and silent voice, though, twists and settles and finds nourishment in the small, quiet sounds that fill the flat nonetheless: in the comfortable conversations Jo carries on, reading Sherlock’s responses in the set of her shoulders, the tilt of her head, the twist of her lip; in the dry, sparkling corners of her mind, full to bursting with new sensory input. 

++

The first few days, Jo just thinks it’s Sherlock thinking, or Sherlock being impetuous, or Sherlock being one of any number of unreadable emotions. She had warned her, hadn’t she, in the lab? _Sometimes I don’t talk for days on end._ It hadn’t yet happened — Sherlock’s stream of words, of exclamations and insults and remarks, seems to continue with little regard for Jo’s presence or absence — but first times and all that.

After two days, Jo stops asking Sherlock if she’d like tea, what she wants for takeaway, what to watch on telly, and starts ignoring her back. That lasts for one day, during which time Sherlock doesn’t stir from the sofa, doesn’t drink, eat, or pee, and when Jo wakes up the next morning to see her, still prone across the cushions, she snaps.

“Oh, for fuck’s sake. Sherlock, get up and _do_ something.” The only response is a slight flutter of Sherlock’s hand, raised from the edge of the sofa, waving her away. “Oh, for the love of —” Jo steps over to the sofa, grabs Sherlock’s arms, and bodily hauls her up, slinging her limp body over her shoulders in a fireman’s carry.

Jo straightens with a grunt; Sherlock’s lithe, anaemic body is heavier than it looks, and she’s shifting in protest, wriggling to escape Jo’s grasp, though still not uttering a word. Jo takes her into the bathroom and drops her body heavily into the bath. Sherlock glares back, affronted. 

“Well, you weren’t going to do it,” Jo says mildly. “Now, strip and wash or I’ll do it for you. I’m warning you,” she adds, “I have a terrible bedside manner.”

Sherlock narrows her eyes but, after a long moment of held glares, she stands and begins to push the dressing gown off her shoulders. Jo watches long enough to see her drop the silk garment to the floor and wriggle out of her grey tee, revealing, as she leans to slide off her pyjamas, sharp shoulder blades and a long line of vertebrae like beads on a string. 

Jo gathers her clothes to put in the wash and shuts the door behind her, waiting long enough to hear the water turn on before heading to the kitchen.

Sherlock emerges with her curls sticking wetly to her forehead and the back of her neck, clean, dark trousers and a fresh tee on. She doesn’t wear a bra — she never does, Jo has noticed with slight jealousy — and the cotton sticks to the still-damp undersides of her breasts and underarms. 

“Welcome back to the living,” Jo says, and nods her head toward the table. She’s reheated some leftover Chinese and the smell of garlic and soy sauce pervades the air. Sherlock eats in silence, but at least she eats, and Jo carries on a one-sided and entirely too cheerful conversation with herself.

She’d be a lot more worried, she thinks ten days into Sherlock’s self-imposed vow of silence, if Sherlock weren’t in every other way acting normal. Well, her normal. She pores over her daily stack of newspapers, spends hours on her computer, and seems attached to her mobile. Six days in they get a text from Lestrade and Sherlock sweeps into the scene, gives a cursory glance around, peers at the inner elbows of the victim, and sweeps back out without a word. 

Lestrade raises his eyebrows to Jo, who shrugs. “She’s not very — talkative, of late,” she says, by way of explanation, but is unable to clarify anything in the face of Lestrade’s still-bemused expression because Sherlock’s already in the street hailing a cab. 

Sherlock solves it, texting the answer. She does the same with the next three: at nine days, twelve, fourteen. She answers every email to her website in her usual fashion; Jo reads over her shoulder, rebuking her slightly for each insult but unable to keep in her laughs. She and Jo communicate just fine even without words; she’s no less prone to grabbing Jo and redirecting her body forcefully, to sighing loudly and rolling her eyes, to quirking the quickest flicker of a smile when Jo’s done something interesting. 

The flat feels quiet, but not lonely. 

On day sixteen Jo wakes in the small hours of the morning with a dry throat and goes downstairs for a glass of water. Drinking it, leaning against the counter, she becomes aware of movement in the darkened sitting room. She downs the rest of the water and holds onto the glass; blunt and heavy bottomed, it would easily make a good projectile or weapon if needed. 

She needn’t attack anyone, as it turns out, the intruder being just Sherlock rustling in the dark, pacing a triangular path from the sofa to the desk to the mantle. 

“Hey,” Jo says, long since cured of any expectation of an answer. “What are you doing up?” Sherlock stills and just looks at her; in the weak orange light from the streetlamps, her expression looks almost soft-edged, pained, before it’s covered by a more habitual annoyance. “Can’t sleep?” Jo asks, the words mundane and unnecessary in the air. _Obvious_ , Sherlock would say caustically, were she saying anything at all.

“Me neither,” Jo continues. She sits on the sofa and pats the cushion next to her. “C’mon, let’s watch some of your favourite inane, mind-numbing telly.” She can almost see the hint of a smile, she thinks, as Sherlock hesitates then drops, her body collapsing like a stringless puppet into the seat next to Jo. 

Jo flips to a rerun of something — a quiz show they don’t watch often — and leans against the back of the sofa, legs sprawled, knee just touching Sherlock’s. After a few minutes, Sherlock shifts, settling into the sofa, her shoulder brushing against Jo’s and head beginning to droop. 

Jo’s hand skims the side of Sherlock’s thigh when she readjusts, and Sherlock sighs, a soft breath so low Jo almost wonders if she imagined it. Hesitantly, she skims the backs of her knuckles again down Sherlock’s leg, and Sherlock presses against her. Jo smiles and, with more assurance, rubs her knee, letting Sherlock settle so that her shoulder leans against Jo’s torso, her head just resting on Jo’s shoulder.

Sherlock presses back; like this, wordless and warm and nearly affectionate, she reminds Jo of a small child seeking uncertain comfort. She finds she doesn’t mind at all providing. 

Jo awakens to pain in her neck, slowly raising her head off the back of the sofa and clearing her throat uncomfortably. In the night, Sherlock has slid down until her head is pillowed on Jo’s thigh, one hand warm and solid below Jo’s leg, and her breath cold against a small patch of drool.

Her movement wakes Sherlock, who pushes herself up, standing and stretching. Sherlock, of course, doesn’t speak, so Jo doesn’t either.

++

At twenty, it’s been five long days without a case, and each night Sherlock spends pacing the sitting room floor until her limbs fall heavy with the movement and demand respite. Two of the nights, Jo has come down, yawning, to compose Sherlock’s body on the sofa — like she’s a musician ready to play her, fingers trilling across the fine bones of her skull, melodies through her hair; or, perhaps more aptly, a surgeon extracting, with precise and knowing hands, that which runs and runs and runs through her mind, robbing her of sleep. On the third day, Jo moves more stiffly and Sherlock, that evening, muffles her steps. Jo doesn’t come down and Sherlock, toes stuttering across the floor, collapses in her bed.

Last night, she’d made it to bed with time enough to strip out of her days-old pyjamas and burrow into the sheets naked. She wakes, shamefully, with the tartan blanket from Jo’s armchair spread haphazardly over her and the sound of Jo’s feet in the kitchen. She wriggles to unwind herself; the duvet is twisted around one leg, half out of its cover, and the sheet pulled from the corners and balled uncomfortably under her hip. Freeing herself, she rolls out of the bed, surprised at the refusal of her limbs to coordinate, and lands on the ground with a pained groan. A steadying breath helps her stand and, tugging to free it from the mess of bedclothes, she wraps the sheet around her body, tossing one corner over her shoulder. She has to lift the bottom to walk without tripping.

“Morning,” Jo says cheerfully once she reaches the kitchen. “Afternoon, more like.” Sherlock glances out the window in surprise; the sun is low already and it’s at least three. She huffs and Jo laughs. “Needed it, didn’t you. Not just transport, that skinny little body of yours.”

“Boring,” Sherlock responds, and Jo laughs, patting her arm, before going quite still. Distracted by the lingering touch of Jo’s hand at her bare elbow, Sherlock for one long moment doesn’t realise what’s happened. “I’ve often said —” she begins before coughing, her voice cracking on the words, throat tight and tongue unwieldy with disuse. 

“Not recently,” Jo says softly, then slaps Sherlock on the arm, and says, louder, “It’s about goddamn time. If I had to interpret your huffs and strops at another crime scene —”

“I don’t strop,” Sherlock says; the intended tone of her voice goes awry and ends up petulant and squealing. Jo laughs, delighted. 

“And I’m the queen. Sit down, I’m feeding you.” She presses against Sherlock’s shoulder quite firmly; Sherlock resists, just for a moment, to feel the touch linger, then sits as guided. 

Across the table, above the messy welsh rarebit, Jo’s face is fond, lips turned up and eyes crinkled at the corners. 

“Let’s go for a walk today.” Sherlock raises one eyebrow, unimpressed. Jo sighs. “Or, well — get out of the flat. Do you have some checking up to do on your network?”

Sherlock ruminates for a moment, not on her network — which does need some attention, a note here and there to make sure everyone’s still invested — but on the fact that Jo’s not left the flat either, not without Sherlock, since the pool. “You go ahead. Or — you must have someone to, to see. Sam — surely he’s surprised, not having seen you since —” She doesn’t finish the thought; already Jo’s face is tightening, annoyance and concern writ large in the crinkles between her brows. 

“I’m not — I don’t need to get off, I’m perfectly capable —” Of what, she doesn’t say. “I’d like you to come with. Fresh air,” she adds brightly. “Doctor’s orders.”

“Am I your patient now?”

“When aren’t you?” Jo’s teeth bite at the edge of her lip in a cross-ways grin. “You’re rubbish at it, anyway — never listening to my advice, requiring all sorts of emergency care.” 

“Yes, well,” Sherlock says, letting the laughter in Jo’s voice warm her veins, “it’s rather a good thing I keep you around.”

“Yes,” Jo says, “Yes, I believe so.”

**Author's Note:**

> Title for this story and the series comes from Elizabeth Bishop's "IV/ _O Breath_ "
> 
> Beneath that loved and celebrated breast,  
> silent, bored really blindly veined,  
> grieves, maybe lives and lets  
> live passes bets,  
> something moving but invisibly,  
> and with what clamor why restrained  
> I cannot fathom even a ripple.  
> (See the thin flying of nine black hairs  
> four around one five the other nipple,  
> flying almost intolerably on your own breath.)  
> Equivocal, but what we have in common's bound to be there,  
> whatever we must own equivalents for,  
> something that maybe I could bargain with  
> and make a separate peace beneath  
>  **within if never with.**


End file.
